Flowers & butterflies

Our days are filled with sunshine and fresh air and we have been exploring different parts of the park each day. Today we spent time watering the pretty flowers near the tap. Our intention was to get water to mix with sand in the sand box however we noticed the beautiful coloured flowers when we were walking back. We stopped and watered the flowers just like we watered our plants this morning. Sui chan’s plant has started sprouting which is exciting. One of the other things that we did outside was to collect sakura petals and we found a new place inside the rope that surrounds one of the trees. Shelley asked us if we knew why there was a rope around the tree. We were not sure so she told us that we are supposed to stay on the other side of the rope so we climbed over and under the rope and continued collecting sakura petals.

Here is a picture of Ren and Sui trying to climb the tree and Nico watering the plants. We also saw that there was a man sleeping on a bench and he had a suitcase with him. Ren asked if this was his house as we had seen him once before lying there. Shelley told us that sometimes people don’t have a house and so they sleep in the park or find somewhere that they can have shelter for the night.

We started off our day showing Nico the trains as he hadn’t had an opportunity to play with them. We built tracks according to a design on the sheet that comes with the train set. We also attached another part to it so that we could have two trains going at the same time but not running into one another.

Our morning circle focused on bees and butterflies. We made our hands look like they were butterfly wings by joining our thumbs together. Then we fluttered our fingers and we flew around the room. The butterflies searched for flowers to land on so we planted seeds and curled up on the ground and grew into flowers. Then the butterflies flew away. Shelley made up a song while we were pretending to be butterflies but she is not sure if she can remember it.

We have seen butterflies in the park lately and in fact there are two white ones which come to visit often. We looked at pictures of butterflies in a book and saw that they have beautiful wings. One of our activities today was making butterflies. We used a part of a hard roll of cardboard; coloured it in using Posca’s; pasted sparkles onto tissue paper and then our teachers used the hot glue gun and attached everything to the coloured roll; which is the body. We will take them upstairs with our bees and attach them to our nature scene. Our teachers think that from next week we will go back to the third floor so see you all there on Monday!

We sang our good morning songs and went through the days of the week. It is really funny when Shelley sings the days of the week in different pitches and tones and we always anticipate that she will sing today’s name in a really funny voice….and she does! We helped change the day and date on the calendar and are trying to remember how to count higher than ten. It is tricky when we get to thirteen and then we seem to get stuck or we miss out fourteen. Shelley says that she has taught for so many years and this is always been the same pattern with children that she had taught. Ren always has a huge smile on his face when we do this song. We sang action games and songs and moved different parts of our bodies. Sui completed her cherry blossom tree painting using the plastic thimble to sponge pink paint on the tree that look like flowers. When Noah comes next week, we will complete the paintings together.

Have a great weekend and see you on Monday.

Love Shelley and Darren